Modern integrated circuits are made of literally millions of active devices, such as transistors and capacitors. These devices are initially isolated from each other, but are later interconnected together to form functional circuits. Typical interconnect structures include lateral interconnections, such as metal lines (wirings), and vertical interconnections, such as vias and contacts. Interconnections are increasingly determining the limits of performance and the density of modern integrated circuits. On top of the interconnect structures, bond pads (or input/output “I/O” pads) are formed and exposed on the surface of the respective chip. Electrical connections are made through bond pads to connect the chip to a package substrate or another die. Bond pads can be used for wire bonding or flip-chip bonding.
Flip-chip packaging utilizes bumps to establish electrical contact between a chip's I/O pads and the substrate or lead frame of the package. Structurally, a bump actually contains the bump itself and a so-called under bump metallurgy (UBM) layer located between the bump and an I/O pad. For example, an UBM layer may contain an adhesion layer, a barrier layer and a wetting layer, arranged in this order on the I/O pad. The bumps themselves, based on the material used, can be classified as solder bumps, gold bumps, copper pillar (or copper post) bumps and bumps with mixed metals. Recently, copper pillar (or copper post) bump technology has emerged. Instead of using solder bump, an electronic component is connected to a substrate by means of copper pillar bumps, which achieve finer pitches with minimum probability of bump bridging, reduces the capacitance load for the circuits, and allows the electronic component to perform at higher frequencies. It is within this context the following disclosure arises.